Autumn Leaves

Having spent 3 hours raking my front garden today, I wondered what everyone does with the leaves they rake up? On the other side of the road we have what is essentially a small wood - and I can't tell you how many tons of leaves have heaped up in our garden. Should I mulch, should I burn or should I just dump the lot back on the other side of the road and hope the wind doesn't blow them back! Thanks.

You should consider yourself blessed, Muddywelly, all those leaves.
Ideally, you could make a 'bin' in the corner of your garden from chicken mesh and dump the leaves in it. In a years time you will have a humus rich material that is excellent ofr your garden. It will be even better in two years time and better still in three!
At the moment I am using the 1 tonne bulk bags that come from builders merchants with sand or grit as an alternative to chicken mesh bins.

You should read Spritz's black gold blog, moongrower - she uses the same method I've always used, and it is plastic binliners, with holes punched in, turns into lovely, rich, crumbly leafmould, not rotten at all, works really well.

Sorry Bamboo but our experience with bin bags - holes or not - is that everything becomes 'sweaty' and you do not get a good breakdown into leaf mold. If you just want slime and sludge fine, otherwise you need arobic decomposition.

Must be your climate up there, then Moongrower, can't think of another explanation - you are colder and probably wetter than either Spritz or I - I found it to be very successful, and clearly Spritz does too.

Thanks for all the responses - sounds like I need to fish everything out of the wheelie bin and put it into black bags. I'm not sure I'm tempted, but I might give it a go, because when I got home tonight - it looked like another 3 tons was in the garden! Lol!

What PM, muddywellie? And I don't understand what on earth I might be upset about? Takes an awful lot to upset me, you know - I don't consider disagreement upsetting at all, but I still don't know why you think I might be...I'll check my inbox and send you a PM;-))))